Gladiator [part 5]

"Make it swift, Riegion. I cannot bear any more humiliation." Rowine's face is covered in blood and bruises, but even so he manages to give a hint of a smile up at Riegion.

   "Maybe the Emperor will acknowledge your abilities and allow you to fight another day."

   "You are young, but not naive, Riegion, you know that he has never given second life to one as pitiful and dead as I. I have served my purpose, now do a you must."

   Riegion stands up and looks up to where he knows the Emperor is seated in a special box with his wife and the Commander a either side.

   "Riegion Vaselle. His Excellency, Emperor Taurence Valisky has declared you victor. Finish your opponent and claim your prize."

   He looks down at Rowine who has since closed his eyes. Either that or the swollen lids had finally given up the struggle to stay open. Riegion takes his remaining sword in both hands and angles the blade down over the others heart. The sharp tip will easily pierce through the tight muscled flesh of Rowine's torso with even the lightest of pressure, but Riegion can't bring himself to do it. This is always the hardest part for him. The killing.

   "They're watching. Do not lose yourself at my expense." Riegion looks down to see Rowine's hand encircling the blade of his sword. Blood drips down the tip of it where it's cutting into his palm.

   Riegion takes in a deep breath, squeezes his eyes shut, and drives the blade home, embedding it deep into Rowine's chest before twisting it and pushing down a bit harder. Rowine didn't cry out, just gurgled nonsense around the blood pooling in his mouth before falling back against the dust and laying still.

   The crowd erupts into cheers around him as Riegion's hand slides off the hilt and he looks up around him, everything blurring into silver and white.

   He isn't a killer. But he has to be. Killing is what it means to live now, because without doing it he'll end up dead himself. Killing is what it means to be a Gladiator.

A/N: And that is what i like to call milking a story for all the blogs it's worth. Thank you. Thank you.

Gladiator [part 4]

 A metal circle to the legs probably doesn't feel good, but Rowine's training has him up again in no time, diving for his lance as Riegion advances behind him, drawing out his long thin swords from off his back. Rowine's fingers close around the wooden base of his weapon and he turn onto his back in time to use the long grip of the lance to block a particularly harsh blow Riegion rains down on him. Riegion grunts as his opposer delivers a swift kick to his gut and he stumbles back, giving the other just enough time to roll back to his feet.

   They carry on for a while in the deadly dance. Riegion stabbing and thrusting his swords just to be blocked by Rowine and vice versa. Every now and then one person lands a solid punch to the face or chest or gut but otherwise they circle in an evenly matched war. Just as the crowd wants.

   Riegion goes to make a jab with his sword but at the last second, he throws it to the right and, as Rowine is preoccupied with blocking his face from a blade, Riegion folds his hand into a fist and buries it into the flesh of the others stomach, earning a strangled groan and a wheeze of air as Rowine falls expended to the ground.

   Riegion kicks the lance out of Rowine's tired fingers and kneels down to pull his sword from its belt and cast it too out of reach.

Gladiator [part 3]

Rowine noticed the act and his face twists down into an annoyed frown. The lance is his primary weapon, and, by throwing it away, Riegion gave himself the upper hand.

   For a moment they circle around the weapon table, their eyes locked on each others with twin glares. Outside the arena Riegion and Rowine aren't exactly friends, but Rowine had once picked Riegion up  off the ground after a particularly rough training session when Riegion had first been dropped in the barracks. They have no malice towards each other, but in a fight to the death, friendship doesn't matter.

   Riegion can see it in his eyes the second before Rowine acts, and he's in the middle of his counter attack as Rowine fakes left and turns to sprint right in a desperate attempt for his precious lance. He makes only one mistake: turning his back on Riegion.

   There's a circular shield on the table and Riegion picks it up, throwing it like a frisbee at the back of Rowine's legs. It hits him square in the back of the knees and he crumples to the ground midstep, skidding a few more inches in the dirt before stopping. Riegion could've thrown one of his daggers right into the others back, but he didn't want Rowine to die a cowards death just as he didn't want to stab a comrade in the back.

Gladiator [part 2]

A loud bell echoes off the stone walls and before the sound is done Riegion is shooting forward towards the center of the arena.  

   He reaches the long stone block of a table first, naturally, he's got the best legs in the barracks by far, but Rowine's gaining quickly so Riegion doesn't have long to find his weapon of choice. Of course he'd been surveying the area the entire time he'd been waiting for the fight to start, so he knew the twin swords were on the left end of the table buried under a broadsword and a quiver of arrows. The only problem is that his secondary weapon, a belt with six throwing knives dangling off of it, is on the opposite end of the slab, thus taking up valuable time to grab them and throwing off his entire plan to dodge left.

   He takes a second to make a decision and opts out of the knives, settling rather for two slender daggers that slide into sheaths already dangling from his hips. The Commander knows his fighting style. He's obviously just teasing Riegion by making his weapons of choice unreachable.

   But the Commander knows Rowine just as well and, while the older male is shuffling through the pile of sharp metal on the other end of the table, Riegion picks up a long lance and throws it as hard as he can towards the side of the arena he just came from.

Gladiator [part 1]

A/N: hey we get to do that thing now where i write something really long and then break it up into 200 or so word blocks so i can meet blog requirements! Yay.

The sun is harsh and relentless as it beats down on the bare backs of two young men who stand facing each other across the width of a huge arena. Riegion Vaselle flexes his fingers before curling them into two fists so tight that his jagged nails threaten to break the skin.

   His heart pounds in his chest and he closes his eyes, breathing in a slow breath and doing his best to tune out the monotonous roar of the crowd. It isn't his first fight, but each and every one leaves a pit of fear and despair in his stomach.

   "Fighters at the ready." A voice that's trying too hard to sound deep and commanding booms over the loud speakers, pulling Riegion up out of his semi-calm trance.

   Riegion reacts as he was trained to, by crouching down so low that his bare knees almost touch the dusty ground and leaning forward on his front leg like an animal about to pounce. Even with his eyes closed his mind had been running calculations on his first move once the bell tolls. He practice every day in this arena so he knows that it takes ten long strides at a dead sprint to reach the weapons table in the middle, and five more steps to the left to make sure that he's out of the way of his opponent who's coming up on the table at the same time he is.

   The only problem with his calculations is the fact that Rowine Ainsly, his opponent, has been practicing just as long as he has and knows Riegion's fighting style just as well as Riegion knows Rowine's.

   "Begin!" 

Kitties

So I think I've finally convinced mother to let us get a new cat so i can, yet again, attempt to get it to love me. Because Ryna (my right now cat) kind of doesnt like me because she doesn't like to be held and i hold her....a lot. Also i love cats so why not get another!! so right now we're between a Bengal

which is half cat half WILD ANIMAL so why not. also...comes in white

much cute am i right?

Yeah but then mother sends me an email and she's all: What about a Savannah? So i google that.

turns out these things are HUGE. WAT? GIANT CAT. YES.

But then i came across the Ocicat. Which isn't wild at all so its cute and sweet and wow very cute. and comes in white too

Wow. look how adorable. and tame. tame is good.

And this is a normal coloured one. I mean ugh. how precious.

So i'm surrounded by stupid dog loving people who are like "Yeh cats whatever but DOGS" and that makes me mad because look at these things. they're kind of freaking perfect. So. you can take your dog opinions and shove it. 

Aiya [part 11]

That was the last work of Veronni Adain, the greatest member of the AAS to date, and probably the greatest artist in the history of mankind. In the memorial hall at the entrance to Trawl – a place anyone entering the city must walk through – there are ten paintings hanging on either side of a white stone bust. He actually refused to paint anything else, wanting to his career and life on something he was proud of.

On the left of the bust is The View from My Window as painted by a sixteen year old Veronni, all the paintings having been repurchased by the AAS and brought back together from their various new homes to hang in their new home where they rightfully belonged.On the right, The New View from My Window hung, the timeless brush strokes playing host to the history of a man whose name hung off everyone’s lips years before he even made a name for himself.

Veronni Adain. The Angel of the Poor.

In his last days as a particularly rough battle with cancer took its toll on him, he told his wife that the best window to watch from was the window of the past.

Aiya [part 10]

April 23, 2231, two months before his wife’s eighty eighth birthday, he closed himself in his room and kept everyone out.

In June, on Evalonna’s birthday, he left her a note on the counter that said:

I made my masterpiece when I was sixteen, but that was then. Now my life has changed, as has the view from my window.

She smiled at the familiar scrawl and ventured further into the house. Mimicking his show in the streets during his sixteenth summer, Veronni was standing on the coffee table with a line of blanket covered canvases.

“You’re going to hurt yourself up there, old man.” She teased in a lighthearted manner.

“Sit down,” he chided as his hand waved towards the sofa, “I finally made it; my final masterpiece. The New View from My Window.”

He dramatically pulled the blankets off his work and immediately Evalonna burst into tears.

The first canvas showed her when they first met with her hair pulled back and yellow dress skirt whipping around her tan bare legs. Next was their first child, Kaleera, playing in the garden surrounded by explosions of reds blues and greens. The next two were simple paintings of their house and grandchildren, and the final one was a self-portrait of himself wearing an open locket around his neck with a picture of his mother on one side, and Evalonna on the other.

Aiya [part 9]

Aiya’s slums never got cleaned up like Veronni wanted, but he gave the oney he earned from selling the Elmir children painting, to Liela and Mikael, the two eldest, and only surviving, Elmirs.

Mr. Flinn, or, Storm as he insisted on being called, became one of the family. He and his partner, Emmit, retired together in a small cottage on the outskirts of Trawl, and went over for dinner at the Adain’s at least once a week. Storm had ended up heading the AAS for a few years, which fulfilled a life-long dream he’d shared with his actor husband. Emmit had been the lead actor for the AAS for almost a decade alongside Veronni who had been head of both the painter and writer sectors of the AAS. Heading a section meant being the face of every person in Aiya – whether part of the AAS or not – who partook in the activity.

Veronni’s family grew excessively by the latter portion of his life. His fifth grandchild was born on his sixtieth birthday, and, ten years later, after the death of Storm (emit had passed away three years prior) he had twenty two little ones that pined for his attention.

Veronni painted almost five hundred paintings during his fifty years with the AAS, but, after finishing each one, he would shake his head and mutter:

           “Still not the one."

Aiya [part 8]

One week with the AAS turned into a month, and then a year, and then the years kept on flying by. The people of Aiya appreciated Veronni’s works in a way the citizens of his community never could. The going price for one painting could have kept electricity and food flowing into a whole street of houses for a lifetime.

He was vacationing at Aiya’s Frescia Lake during a break when he was nineteen and met Evalonna West. They fell in love and got married beneath the spring blossoms of cherry trees a few weeks later. Veronni brought his mom up from her new house in Avon in the Aiya countryside to give away his parentless bride.

The two young adults moved in together in Trawl, Aiya’s capital city, to stay close to their work. Surprisingly enough they both had worked with the Aiya Artist’s Society for years; he in the both the writer and artist sector, and her in the musician.

He spent every day writing, painting, and sketching; his job was to pump new materials out for Aiya. Every night he came home to spend the evenings with his wife, and, four years after their union, his daughter Kaleera. By the time he was thirty, his house was host to five more mouths: Felix, Meerah, Aldriech, Frescia, – named for the place her parents met at – and Veronni’s mother when she grew too sick to care for herself.

Their lives were marked by one success after another, a stark contrast to his sixteen years of poverty and wondering where his next meal would come from.

Aiya [part 7]

“Come with me. Just live there for a week, if you don’t like it, I’ll send you right back here to…whatever you have here, and leave you alone.”

“I really don’t know…”

“One week.”

Veronni knew he was right. There was nothing tying him down besides his mother, and she’d tell him to jump at the first chance he got to escape the fate she’d lived in since birth.

“Can I at least say goodbye?”

There was a moment where it looked like Mr. Flinn was seriously considering saying no, but he flipped open his pocket watch and let out a long sigh before he nodded his consent.

Five hours later, after a meal that was considered grand for Veronni and a snack for Mr. Flinn, Veronni’s mother helped him into the front seat of Mr. Flinn’s car and kissed him on the forehead.

“Go on my little Angel. Fly away and never look back.”

A few kids pressed up against the car to say goodbye, and the older people stood back to wave their farewell from afar.

“All right, all right, back it up. We’re moving out.”

Mr. Flinn started the car and the kids lept back withsurprised squeals like the car was some sort of loud monster about to strike.

           “C’mon boy. Time for you to meet the real world."

Aiya [part 6]

Veronni walked up behind the male, peering over his shoulder with a bewildered look on his face.

“That’s beautiful?”

“It’s special. Such care that’s obvious with every brush stroke, and the choice of colour perfectly reflects the somber mood of the painting.”

“Then why was it so good at making people hate me?”

A pregnant pause filled the air around them for a moment as Mr. Flinn pondered his next question.

“Veronni, look around, what do you see?”

Veronni’s eyes moved over their scant surroundings before he ended on the view of his own leaning shanty.

“I see desolation thanks to a government that’s forgotten us…”

Mr. Flinn waves his hand dismissively.

“Besides that. I see a poor place that needs help. Children like these are starving and dying daily all around you, and you cant change that. The people here looked to you to take their surroundings and use your power of art to make the hideous look bearable. The moment you unveiled reality to them, they turned away.”

Veronni hung his head, but when Mr. Flinn clapped him on the shoulder, he looked up once again.

“Come with me.” Mr. Flinn leaned in and whispered the words in Veronni’s ear.

“Where?”

“The AAS. Veronni, you have something special in you. You can still see the beauty in a world where there seemingly is none.”

“I have no place in that world, though.”

“You’re smart, Veronni, you’ll make it. You have nothing here anymore anyways thanks to your little stunt here. Also. Think of your mother. The income you’d make in a week would feed this whole street steak dinner for a month. She’d be well taken care of.”

Veronni’s bottom lip trembled, but he bit down on it to still it. Even with all his intelligence, with, and skill, he was still only a kid in the grand scheme of things

Aiya [part 5]

Veronni’s eyes widened. Even in the poorest parts of town, the AAS was a big thing. Aiya prided itself on its artistic abilities, and formed a “society”, or business, of the greatest writers, musicians, and artists to be at the forefront of all of Aiya.

Veronni bent at the waist in a low bow as he tried to humble himself before someone from so high a place. “Pleasure to meet you, sir. I’m-“

“Veronni Adain, yes I’ve heard of you. Everyone’s heard of you.” Mr. Flinn took his hand in a firm grip. “Everybody has at least heard tale of this phantom angel of the poor who turns everything he touches beautiful.”

Veronni’s tan cheeks turned red and his eyes flicked down in embarrassment. For him, being this so-called “angel” was a curse; a burden for those around him, even when their uneducated eyes could’nt see it.

“Veronni, I was wondering if you’d like to do me the honour of returning to the AAS with me.”

Blue eyes met the strangely dark crimson colour of Mr. Flinn’s.

“Why would you want me?”

“Because you see beauty where others assumed there was none.” Mr. Flinn’s words were almost reverent as he ran a hand down the edge of the Elmir kids painting.

Aiya [part 4]

“What did you with our Angel?” one man shouted from the crowd, and in a fit of curse words and disappointment, the people scattered back to their daily grind.

Veronni was satisfied with the reaction and started slowly breaking down his ‘stage’.

“Need any help?” A man crept up behind Veronni with his hands shoved into the pockets of his pleated black suit pants.

“Come to see the fall of an Angel? That’s the kind of thing you rich people get off on in your movies and such, isn’t it?” Veronni was wise beyond his sixteen years of age. He was self-educated off books he’d picked up along his way, and easily the smartest person in his community. A bit of sass wasn’t beyond him.

“No, I’ve come to patch up his wings so that he can fly higher than ever.”

Veronni stopped what he was doing and turned around to get the first glimpse of the older male.

He had salt-and-pepper hair that was receding on the sides even though he didn’t look that old, and his strangely red eyes – probably contacts – were framed by thin eyebrows and laugh lines.

“I’m Daaron Flinn. I work for the Aiya Artist Society."

Aiya [part 3]

Word leaked into town, and, on the day of his grand unveiling, a good amount of rich people arrived in their cars – much to the amazement of the poor children who’d never seen one before – to watch.

Veronni set up in the center of his street on a small platform he’d made out of planks of mismatched wood. He had five canvases on varying tables, all covered in tarps and holey quilts he’d taken from their linen closet.

“You praise me for an angelic touch,” he began in a grand, practiced voice that wavered with youth and conviction, “but all I’ve ever done for you is wrongfully blind you.”

Confused murmurs spread throughout the crowd and a few of the rich leaned forward in their car seats. No one understood. Veronni had been a Godsend to them, taking the edge off of their painful reality.

“That is why I made this: The View from My Window.” HE sauntered over to the first canvas and tugged down the ratty blanket. “Day one.”

On the canvas was the haggard face of Franny White with bruises that crawled up her cheek illuminated in the dying embers of a fire. She was crouched beneath the overhang of the leaning building adjacent Veronni’s trying to shield herself from the freezing rain.
As he went down the line, the paintings grew progressively darker, ending with the naked emaciated bodies of the Elmir children as they shivered under a broken street light. It was common knowledge that Eliza and Francis Elmir had died in a huge fire over a year prior, but everyone in their sector was too poor to take in three extra starving mouths. It was quite honestly a miracle to everyone that all three had survived for so long

Aiya [part 2]

With money earned from taking odd jobs and people buy his work, Veronni kept up his cache of art supplies, but in the summer of his fifteenth year, he broke down and turned away anyone who came inquiring about his work.

For a while he took to writing stories, but those just pleased people all the more, and they flocked to him to acquire some new valiant tale to read to their children.

Veronni knew hes peers were as poor or poorer than he, but every single one refused to take anything on charity. Poor people had the worst sense of pride when it came to only taking things they earned. There was an air of wonder that intoxicated them and they felt they had to have his drawings and stories, and families were growing hungrier because of that.

So Veronni began to work on his masterpiece. He went to town and spent all his money on a set of the highest quality paints and five canvases, and locked himself in his room to begin. His mother begged him for days to come out and eat, but he just turned her away and continued his feverish work.

People were on edge for a week and the air in their meager community grew tense as they waited for their “Angel’s” grand piece.

Aiya [part 1]

A/N: before I even start I'm just going to apologize because blogs are due really super soon and I needed blogs so I kind of wrote an entire short story and it's like eleven parts so strap in it's going to be a long one. Also it's really long because I kind of milked it and split it into eleven 2-250 word parts. Blogs are hard to come by. Don't look at me like that.

Veronni Adain was born in the slums of Aiya to one of the poorest families in the sector. He was a happy baby, and, given his dire circumstances, he remained carefree and excitable throughout the entirety of his youth. His wide blue eyes saw something in the world that the people around him could not; he saw beauty.

His mother scraped together her meager savings to buy him some paper and pencils for his tenth birthday saying that every little boy should have a chance for creativity. By giving him that pitiful excuse of an art set, she’d given him his future.

Veronni used every inch of those precious pages writing and sketching. He would sit outside in the dirt and watch the world happen around him, and transpose it to paper. But his drawings were special; different. The slums of Aiya were drab and gross and small with too many people packed into too little space. Yet somehow, the pencil of a ten year old made it worth looking twice at.

He would catch the passing smiles of children who ran by playing tag in their bare feet and brown clothes, or the relieved look on a mother’s face when she saw her husband returning from another successful day at the mill. The people said Veronni possessed some sort of magic and would pay money just to have his beautiful versions of reality hanging on their rotten wooden walls.

Life Update

So i have the SAT tomorrow and im kind of really worried to say the least. i feel pretty good about my writing and reading portions (okay i kind of suck at vocab but thats whatever) but then comes math. to say im bad at math is an understatement. (i need to bring my pre-calc grade up. ick) but i have to get over 500 at least, because that would be pretty nice. Ma keeps trying to get me to study but how do you study math??? you dont. thats the thing. You go in and wing it. but see the problem is im not particularly good at multiple choice kind of tests. Ill write essays and long short answers all day long so i can explain my answer, but multiple choice messes with my head, especially after this test thats like 10 years long. But anywho. Liz will be there with me so thats cool but theres no guarentee we'll be in the same room together even though ourblast names are super close, but afterwards we're going home to play Call of Duty Zombies and die and scream a whole lot because we're good like that...But yes. Also my friend Haley from swimming is going so thatll be pretty cool too. (i have zero clue what time i have to be there to be honest) Wish me luck. I need it sorely
Foreverandalways,
Ave